Dear all,
When we open-sourced Freebase Gridworks almost 2.5 years ago, in May 2010, and then re-branded it to Google Refine in November 2010, little could we anticipate such a diverse and active community of users and use cases that we now have: the project is starred by 2700+ users, and google+'ed by 640+ people; there are 600+ members on this forum. It is used in many newsrooms, and taught in many tutorials, hackathons, and workshops. Academic theses have been written on it; extensions built; recon APIs served; and code and design ideas borrowed. The Twitter stream keeps on buzzing month after month, and, well, you should read for yourself what people have said about Refine (
http://tinyurl.com/9p834vl).
All that excitement is very surprising for a little niche data-wrangling tool.
For almost 2 years we at Google have tried hard to imagine how better Google Refine can be if it is scaled up and integrated with other cloud-based Google products. We've arrived at two insights:
1. The desktop version of Google Refine has struck a fine balance between scale, power, and usability that would be non-trivial to improve upon. For example, increasing scale necessarily decreases power and usability. And it is risky to change that balance in one way or another unless we understand deeply all the existing and future use cases.
2. That understanding of use cases actually lies with you, the real users. You know the forms and shapes of data that you wrangle; you know other tools and services you use Refine with; you know your work flows and how your data-wrangling teams collaborate; etc. In fact, a lot of cool existing features have been suggested by users.
From these insights, we have decided to encourage this community, of both developers and users, to take on more ownership of this project. In specific terms:
1. The project will be forked and rebranded to something like "Open Refine" in order to emphasize that the project will be driven forward primarily by the community. Those of us at Google who use Refine will contribute to the project as one of the many equal contributors.
2. The code base will be transfered to GitHub to make code contributions easier.
We'll work out the logistics of the transition together. If you have ideas, opinions, or want to help out, please chime in! We are actively soliciting additional contributors; now is the time for you to get involved.
We are really looking for your participation. We at Google have taken Refine as far conceptually as we could, and the next phase lies with you.
David
On behalf of Googlers on the Refine team